Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Shares Stance on Online Gambling Tax

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00:00We go to the state of Ohio where Governor Mike DeWine basically is, you know, I'll let you go

00:06more in depth, but, you know, kind of the quick bullet on this is, yeah, not into it. DeWine

00:11does not want, you know, he's concerned about, you know, addictions surrounding online gaming,

00:16does not want to see, you know, legalized gambling obviously happening there in Ohio.

00:22You know, what do you make of what we're hearing right now versus where we're going?

00:25Yeah, it's a really interesting situation there with the governor in Ohio because

00:29he's kind of been really aggressive when it comes to taxing sports betting. I mean, you know,

00:35initially it launched in Ohio with a 10% tax rate. That's very reasonable. The industry loved that

00:42rate. But then less than a year after Sportsbooks launched, DeWine proposed to double it. And so

00:49it passed in the budget, went to 20%. Then this year, two years later, he decided he wanted to propose

00:55in his proposed budget to double that again from 20 to 40%. Lawmakers then didn't go along with it.

01:03In fact, last year, they put out a report that said, you know, the first tax hike was way premature.

01:09Then they also in that same report said, hey, you know, it's a good idea to increase taxes,

01:14online casino. And so that last year, we saw an online casino bill kind of the first one get

01:19introduced, it didn't do anything. Then we had two more, one in the House, one in the Senate

01:24introduced this year, there was a hearing on it, you know, didn't move, but it got the conversation

01:31started. Well, DeWine now comes out and says, no, it's not a good idea. We don't like it. I don't like

01:39the idea of giving people access in Ohio 24 seven on their couches on the commutes, wherever they might

01:45want to gamble. He doesn't like that idea. And so he said, you know, I never, or I don't like to use

01:50the word veto, but if it passes, it probably would get vetoed. So that's a really kind of a, you know,

01:56interesting situation there because you've got lawmakers saying this is how we should raise taxes

02:00if we're going to raise taxes on gambling, which he certainly does, but that's probably because he

02:04doesn't like the sports betting side of it. So yeah, this will be an interesting fight. The industry,

02:10of course, had trouble this year, moving online casino bills anywhere across the country. Kind of

02:17similar concerns from lawmakers, governors, whoever saying, you know what, the problem gambling might

02:23be too big of a risk when it comes to online casino.